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Vertyx rambles - Separating good and fun games

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I got the idea for writing on the separation between good games and fun games when someone on /v/ said that games are bad if they aren't fun. I found that argument to be flawed, so I wrote a small post raising some points about the subject, but the thread 404'd and I thought it could be an interesting subject to write about, so here we go.

Yes, /v/ can inspire intellectual debate. So.

There seems to be an universally shared thought amongst the gaming community that, if a game is not fun, it is bad. At first glance, this argument seems to make sense, as the whole point of playing a game is to enjoy yourself. If the game can not deliver on that front, then it failed to accomplish what it was made for and is, therefore, a bad game. Most people can agree with that. Yet because of my experience with video games over the years, I can't help but think that sentiment is fundamentally flawed, and I'm going to raise a few points to explain exactly why I think this.

First of all, let's take a look at the concept of "fun". Fun is a bit of an abstract concept to describe, but it's generally agreed on that fun is an enjoyable experience. People enjoy having fun. This would mean that any emotions that are not enjoyable to experience, such as anger, fear, tension, or sadness are not fun. With me so far?

Yet there are games out there whose goals are to do exactly that; there's a whole genre based on trying to make the player feel afraid, horror games, and it's a pretty popular genre. There are games out there that try to make the player feel tense, such as Uplink, in which a major part of the gameplay is dedicated to removing evidence of the player's crimes on time to prevent them from being caught, which results in the player losing the progress they had worked so hard for. Because of this, players of the game have to be constantly on edge to prevent "losing" the game, so to speak.

By the definition that good games are fun games, does this mean that these games are bad simply because they make the player feel negative emotions?

Second, I've played certain games over the years that I enjoyed playing, but could not call good; similarly, I've played some games that I can recognize as being good, but did not enjoy playing.

I will come out and say it bluntly: I enjoyed playing Sonic 2006. You're free to kill me over that statement, if you hear me out first: I can not, and will not, ever defend that game. It is, by every definition of the book, a poor game: the story is nonsensical, dumb and full of plotholes, the writing is bad, the graphics aren't anything to be amazed about and the gameplay is broken and unplayable, sometimes quite literally. But despite all of this, I did enjoy playing it. The dumb writing, the broken gameplay, everything about the experience of Sonic 2006 made me feel joyous.

Every villager who moved around like they were trying to figure out how to use arms, every cutscene full of lines George Lucas would cringe at, every glitch that killed me and every bug that should not exist... I can name quite a lot about what's wrong with the game, but needless to say nearly everything about Sonic 06 was enjoyable for me simply because it was so poorly made. But I would never, ever call it a good game.

On the other hand, there was a certain popular game released last year that I think is a very good game, but which I did not enjoy playing and that game is called Grand Theft Auto V.

Now, I think Grand Theft Auto V is a good, well made game: it has hundreds of activities and missions to do, a big and detailed map to explore, it's got fun cheats, it looks good, it has plenty of nice small touches... I could go on, but I'll spare you. People agree with me on this, it seems, as GTAV got great scores and was nearly universally loved by gamers.

But, even if I can recognize how it's a good game, I did not enjoy playing it. At all. I never was good at explaining exactly why I find this, but something about the huge amount of content that GTAV offers does little to excite me. Maybe I just don't enjoy four hours of towing cars, or maybe pretend yoga with a joystick is the worst idea for a video game I've ever heard. Maybe it's because I can't even do the simple act of rampaging through the city like I could in every other GTA game, because the cops are a bunch of cheating bastards who can kill you in one hit from a mile away.

So while I do think that GTAV is a good game simply because it does mark every checkbox on the list of being a good game, I just couldn't find any enjoyment in it most of the time.

So. That's why I argue that there should be a separation between good games and fun games. Any thoughts? Criticism?

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